Toledo coach Gene Cross remembers well the whirlwind of those first few days on the job. There were coaches to hire, recruits to court, players to meet, interviews to give, boos … well, you get the picture. And the former Notre Dame assistant also remembers the peak of the confusion – a morning phone call when he forgot where he worked.
“I said, ‘Gene Cross, University of…’” he said. “And then I slowed down, because I felt the Notre Dame rolling off my tongue. You get programmed so much, you’re talking so much. Whatever program you’re at, it become part of your fabric.”
At least 42 Division I schools will have different coaches to start 2008-09 than started ’07-‘08. About a third of new guys have never served as a head coach at college basketball’s highest level before; better than half will inherit teams they have only followed from afar or seen play on SportsCenter.
Save Texas Tech’s Pat Knight and Geno Ford, the Kent State assistant who got promoted when Jim Christian headed to Texas Christian, each of the new coaches has moved to a new program. They needed different decals for the car, different golf shirts for the road, and, in myriad ways, different identities. And that last part, it seems, is the hardest with which to deal.
“Before I put the signature on my Missouri State e-mails,” said Cuonzo Martin, who became the Bears coach in April, “I was signing them ‘Cuonzo Martin, Purdue University.’ Had to catch myself a few times and make sure those didn’t get out.”
Those near-goofs have become joke fodder for rookie head coaches such as Cross and Martin. But they also show the suddenness of a college coaching change, a quality of the industry since it began. Guys bolt towns with homes unsold, families left behind, and no time to handle anything but their new jobs. Two weeks notice? Most coaches don’t get two days to transition from school to school, from lieutenant to general. And nothing can prepare them for the shock of the switch.
Cross’ oh-my-goodness moment came April 11, the afternoon that Toledo athletic director Mike O’Brien introduced him as the 17th men’s basketball coach in Rockets history. Cross said he tingled as he turned a corner in the on-campus Stadium Club and saw a bank of flashbulbs, microphones and a handful of cheering fans.
“It was surreal,” he said. “All the cameras, the bright lights. Then I started to understand the magnitude of this undertaking. Then I really understood the power of being a head coach.”
Seven hundred miles to the southwest, Martin had already spent two-and-a-half weeks in charge of Missouri State. His priorities mirrored those of most new guys – recruit, connect with the returning players, recruit, compile a staff, recruit, speak in the community and recruit. But an unexpected task dominated his opening week on the job.
“Thank-you cards,” he said. “And sending texts to all the people who helped me get here. There were probably a couple hundred people, all together, that I needed to thank.”
Amid the thank you’s came a few goodbyes for both Cross and Martin. Both released players expected to suit up for their schools next winter; by mid-May, neither was sure of his scholarship situation for the coming academic year. For both, recruiting became a scramble and a dilemma – how many able bodies can we find, and how many of the available scholarships do we spend this late?
Other serious concerns pile up for new guys, from reassuring players of their place in the program to ensuring every staff member’s Blackberry functions fine. Those sorts of tasks clutter the days, as do the seemingly endless list of appointments that don’t matter much to assistant coaches.
“I watched Dave Leitao at Virginia,” Cross said. “I would see him come in the morning with the sport coat in one hand and the suit in the other. He’d shoot out somewhere for lunch, come back and meet with us, then shoot out at night in the suit. I would be like, ‘Where does he keep going?’”
Cross made his share of unexpected, opening-month visits, including one to a morning radio show on a Toledo FM station. Over a 15-minute interview that also featured new women’s coach Tricia Cullop, Cross fielded questions about his shoe size, chatted with a caller impersonating the mayor, learned where to find the town’s beat margarita and played a trivia game that separated fact from fiction about Toledo’s history.
The summer will bring more zany times for these new coaches – the first camps with their names attached, the first camp/tournament swing with them controlling their program’s agenda. Come November, both Cross and Martin will coach their first home games in brand new arenas. Martin said Missouri State plans to open JQH Arena by playing Arkansas.
By then, he hopes, he’ll have a solid roster and continued decent energy around his program. And without a doubt, both he and Cross will have no problems remembering the school for which they now work.
